Month: May 2025

It doesn’t seem long ago, but long gone are the days that I’d travel these aisles with the girls. For some reason, neither Maly or Mara really spent much time in the toy aisles. They always seemed to get along just fine with whatever they had. But we still spent our time in these aisles. I remember many a time that it was me that was dragging the girls down the toy aisles.

Today it just kind of hit me. Maybe I’m feeling empathy because I know there are a lot of parents who are facing a bird fleeing the coop soon. I was also just being nostalgic. I miss having young kids who play with toys. But that doesn’t stop me from perusing the toy aisles.

It wasn’t that long ago that I was walking these aisles and picking out toys with my daughter. Today I walked down these aisles after picking up auto parts for my daughter’s car that she’s taking back with her to college in the fall.

Yesterday we closed the shop 30 minutes early. Saul and I were on a job site most of the day and I had some desk work I needed to catch up on. Fifteen minutes after I found myself all alone athe shop, a customer called me and asked if he could get one piece of roof trim before the weekend. I told him my shop manager and fabricator had already left for the weekend, but that I’d always wanted to learn to work the Autobrake from start to finish. He said he had faith in me.

What this video doesn’t show is the hour-plus it took me to figure out how to get everything to work. I was able to use an existing bend profile on the brake’s computer and modify it, but then I had a hell of time getting the computer to talk to the brake, and even more of a hell of a time figuring out how get past the “pedal deactivated” warning. There is a pedal system that’s used to operate the brake, which is what actually bends the metal.

There was a lot of computer time, geometry, profanity, research, mistakes, headscratching, and more profanity, but I finally figured it out, and I’m damn pround of having fabricated my first piece of metal trim.

This is my waist versus Jared’s thigh. I weigh 140. He weighs 340. He’s an offensive lineman. I’m an okay distance runner. He can sprint faster than me.